I have considered Stevens my favorite Supreme Court Justice since taking a Constitutional law course in college and I was surprised to be disappointed with this book when i first picked it up. In the end, I have oscillated between 3 and 4 stars for this book and I think that it depends on what my expectations about the type of book Justice Stevens wrote. When I first picked up book, I assumed that it would be more historical and academic and more like his written opinions. This book is more of a straight memoir (which to Steven's credit is what he calls it). It reads like you were sitting down with your favorite uncle as he reminisced about his life. This is both a strength of the book and a weakness. There are times that Stevens goes off on tangents and there are often times where I needed to stop reading and look up the specifics of certain cases in order to understand his points, both of these issues sometimes made reading annoying and distracting. However his frank discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of specific justices and individual cases were oftentimes extremely interesting and I think wouldbe missing in a more academic book.